understanding the cuban blogosphere: retrospective and perspectives based on the first bloggers...

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Monett Díaz

Talk at the Interdisciplinary Workshop “UNDER CONSTRUCTION.Analyzing Postcolonial Weblogs with Literary and Computational Methods”

Heidelberg University, Germany, July 11, 2014

Retrospective and Perspectivesbased on the First Bloggers Survey

Understanding the Cuban Blogosphere

monettdiaz @dmonetthttp://www.monettdiaz.com

2

Definition of theCuban

blogosphere

by GarrinchaJune 13th 2008

Image http://losmickeysdemiami.blogspot.de/2008/06/de-los-amigos.html

3Heidelberg University, Germany, July 11, 2014

Image © Stuart Miles at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

What isa blog?


What isa Cuban

blog?


?


Previous work The first survey to Cuban bloggersCollecting and processing data

- Open source technologies

Analyzing and visualizing data Live demoResults with comments on both future

perspectives and practical research

Agenda


- Blogger since 2007

- Chair and organizer of Blogging Cuba: The first Cuban Bloggers MeetingAugust 14th-16th, 2009, Palma de Mallorca, SpainMain topic: “The Cuban Blogosphere and its impact in

culture, society, politics and media”

Background


D. MonettState of the Cuban blogosphere.Results of the first survey to Cuban bloggers

In B. Calvo Peña (Ed.)Buena Vista Social Blog. Internet and freedom of expression in Cubapp. 59–83, Aduana Vieja, Valencia, Spain, 2010ISBN: 978-84-96846-41-8(In Spanish)

Previous work


D. Monett, B. CalvoA Portrait of the Cuban Bloggers based on the First Survey of the Cuban Blogosphere

In Proceedings of the Participatory Communication Research Section28th IAMCR International Conference onCommunication and Citizenship - Rethinking Crisis and ChangeBraga, Portugal, July 18th-22th, 2010

Previous work

Word cloud: www.wordle.net

The content with Wordle


The first bloggers survey


1st survey to Cuban bloggers

Chapters, topics:1. Internet connection and electronic devices2. Blogs and blogging in general3. Blogging platforms, tools and technical features4. Cuba as topic on the blogs and bloggers’

interactions5. Identity construction through blogging6. Some other demographic data for general

statistics(More than 100 questions - to gather as much information as possible)

online/offline, June 2009


Collecting and processing…


Notifications

Image © photoraidz at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

• 5 bloggers, about 2 hours each


Notifications

• List with more than 1000 URLs of alphabetically ordered Cuban blogs




Notifications

• List with more than 1000 URLs of alphabetically ordered Cuban blogs


• Contact to bloggers: manual process



Logos © http://www.phpmyadmin.net/, http://blog.monitor.us/2012/04/how-to-improve-html-performance/, http://inspiredtalents.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/javascript.png, http://www.mysql.com, http://goodlogo.com/extended.info/apache-software-foundation-logo-3074, http://www.php.net

Managing data - open source tech


Managing data - open source tech

Images © Double-J Design, Oxygen Team, Hopstarter, Treetog ArtWork at http://www.iconarchive.com/

1

50+

10+

www.lahuelladelblog.com

v4.0.10

DB client v5.5.35PHP extension for MySQL v4.1+

Database serverPercona v5.0.92

128 tables4,3 MB

(structure & data)

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The database


Data processing 95% online answers; 5% email or hard copy

5 questionnaires discarded (no ethics and common sense hold)

Data cleansing & organization

84.49% response rate (roughly estimated):

%100rBloggerAvgBlogsPe

logsContactedBysValidSurveionParticipat

%49.84%1003

838236

22Heidelberg University, Germany, July 11, 2014Image © adamr at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Data analysis and visualization


Data analysisWhich primary and secondary questions?

Which filters?

Which charts?

How to visualize results?

How to draw conclusions?

How to prepare communication of results?


Data analysisWhich primary and secondary questions?

Which filters?

Which charts?

How to visualize results?

How to draw conclusions?

How to prepare communication of results?

I wish I could attend the Google MOOC“Making Sense of Data”, April 2014, before… ;-)


Product: Website or Intranet Appfor 1 Webserver, 1 non-commercial Website, 1 developer Version 3.1.1, April 10th 2009 More than 40 chart types 66,64 € by August 2009

(current version: about 300,- €)

Data visualization

Image © and more at http://www.fusioncharts.com/ CEO and founder Pallav Nadhani


Data visualization process

See more at http://www.fusioncharts.com/dev-resources/javascript-charts-in-php/

Connect to datasource and query

prepare and executeMySQL query data, rows

Produce chart dataconvert rows intoXML (or JSON) data string

Generate HTML and JS codeto embed on the Website

render chart HTML byincluding

PHP script


Some…


Processing and visualizing results

Images © Double-J Design, Oxygen Team, Hopstarter, Treetog ArtWork at http://www.iconarchive.com/

www.lahuelladelblog.com/

128 tables, 4,3 MB(structure & data)


Dilbert Scott Adams at http://dilbert.com/fast/2008-05-08/(Educational/Classroom usage permission is granted by Universal Uclick. All Rights Reserved)

How “intelligent” canArtificial Intelligence be? Take care!

Analysis of results


Live demo

http://www.lahuelladelblog.com/Resultados/Index.php

Live, interactive 2D/3D charts with survey results Column and bar charts Stacked and multi-series charts Pie charts…


Type of connection


Type of connection

Internet usage in Cuba is controlled by the Government.

Discrepancy is penalized.Private access is almost nonexistent.


Online activities (in Cuba)


Online activities (in Cuba)

CommentingReading news

Photo sharing

Emails

Chats

Social networks

For many Cubans: main source of “alternative, non-official” informationand its sharing (spreading opinions)


Online activities (outside)



Commenting

Reading news

Listening music

Emails

Video watchingSocial networks



88,1%

Almost all topics are highly polarized and politicized… Comments analysis would

drive semantic-based algorithms for sure!

Commenting


Motivations for blogging…

Why do the Cuban bloggers blog?

What are their motivations?

Document personal experiencesKnowledge & experience sharing

Search for information & up to date

For a fair causeTherapy, relief/freedom

Freedom of expression

Sharing non-censored informationNetworking






How to consider this when using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms?

How a semantic analysis?

Image © renjith krishnan at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/


Blogging “for a fair cause”

Word cloud: www.wordle.net

Cuba, freedom, democracy, freedom of expression


Blogging for a fair cause

Word cloud: www.wordle.net. Image © renjith krishnan at http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Cuba, freedom, democracy, freedom of expression

Over 60% answered they are “citizens of the world”. Over 85% of are 30+ years old

( 42+). How does this relate to their motivations for blogging? How ML?


Topics to write about

- Personal- Politics- Art- News- …


68% of the bloggers emigrated from Cuba.(In the Cuban case, not only) the country

of residence might add a strong bias when mining and analysing the data!

Topics to write about


Storage platform/service


Storage platform/service

Data Mining, Machine Learning,Sentiment Analysis, and so on?

Consider e.g. Blogger API v3 and don’t forget to analyze comments to posts!

“The Cuban blogger is a man but there is more than one woman for every three of them. He writes from inside and outside Cuba on blogs of a personal nature but rather he reads about politics. He is more than 40 years old, has finished university studies, is married, has at least one child, and his main motivation for blogging is to express himself freely. He connects via modem to the Internet and has been accessing the Internet for more than five years but less than 10. Once logged in from his home or work, he prefers reading news and sending emails, while he authors an average of three blogs that are hosted on Blogger.com. He does not like to moderate comments because he prefers freedom of expression but sometimes he applies censorship. He was born in Cuba, is a citizen of the world, and lives abroad. He welcomes anonymity, has made many new friends through blogging, and publishes his posts at night. He believes that blogging is a form of journalism, would continue to blog in the future, and believes in blogs as a meeting point for the Cuban nation, which for him is ‘everything’.”

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What we got…


Monett & Calvo 2010

“The Cuban blogger is a man but there is more than one woman for every three of them. He writes from inside and outside Cuba on blogs of a personal nature but rather he reads about politics. He is more than 40 years old, has finished university studies, is married, has at least one child, and his main motivation for blogging is to express himself freely. He connects via modem to the Internet and has been accessing the Internet for more than five years but less than 10. Once logged in from his home or work, he prefers reading news and sending emails, while he authors an average of three blogs that are hosted on Blogger.com. He does not like to moderate comments because he prefers freedom of expression but sometimes he applies censorship. He was born in Cuba, is a citizen of the world, and lives abroad. He welcomes anonymity, has made many new friends through blogging, and publishes his posts at night. He believes that blogging is a form of journalism, would continue to blog in the future, and believes in blogs as a meeting point for the Cuban nation, which for him is ‘everything’.”

51

What we got…

What would computationalmethods get?

How much do you trust (your) “intelligent” algorithms?


Monett & Calvo 2010

Interdisciplinary research needed!

52

Definition of theCuban

blogosphere

by GarrinchaJune 13th 2008

Image http://losmickeysdemiami.blogspot.de/2008/06/de-los-amigos.html

Yes, we can partially understand why...It remains a really big challenge (not only)

for current computational methods!

Prof. Dr. Dagmar Monett Díaz


Retrospective and Perspectivesbased on the First Bloggers Survey

Understanding the Cuban Blogosphere

monettdiaz @dmonetthttp://www.monettdiaz.com

understanding the cuban blogosphere: retrospective and perspectives based on the first bloggers...

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